Lets try this one again, I hit return too soon. There was a recent report about replicating Stanley Milgram's classic obedience experiment. In Milgram's original study done in the 1960s, people were instructed to give electrical shocks to a "learner" whenever the learner got a question wrong. Additionally each time the learner got the question wrong, the subject was to increase the voltage to a maximum of 450 volts. The scale was also labeled from painful through to "Danger Fatal Shock".
Actually there was no learner, he was a confederate in the experiment who only pretended to be shocked. The idea behind the experiment was to look at how far people were willing to go in order to obey the commands of an authority figure. Milgram found that 65% of participants were willing to deliver the maximum level of shocks (450 volts) despite the fact that the learner seemed to be in serious distress or even unconscious. With some changes due to ethical concerns, the researchers found that people obeyed at the same rate that they did when Milgram conducted his original study more than 40 years ago. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2264 When I read these results, I was saddened in a way, I thought over the 45 years or so we would have learned something. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:286325 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
